Chapter 8: The Moon Tower

Thane's POV

I let her walk away from me on the stair.

That was the hardest thing I did all night, harder than breaking Stanmore's wrist.

She asked Pippa whether the Council vote was true, and Pippa told her, and I stood two steps above them in the dark and said nothing.

Anything I said would have sounded like trying to push her into a crown.

My hand still remembered the heat of her wrist.

All through the banquet I had kept my eyes on her cup, and then on her mouth, and then I made myself look at the boar.

It didn't help.

So I went to the Moon Tower instead.

It rises behind the great hall, forty steps of cold stone, and the Keeper of the Stone has lived at the top of it for thirty years.

I climbed it alone.

The Keeper's door should have had a guard on it.

I found him on the landing below, slumped against the wall, breathing slow and deep.

I shook him, and he did not wake.

The stair torches were out on the last two turns, and a spent wick lay on the step, still warm.

I drew my knife and took the rest of the climb slowly.

Someone had wanted the dark up here tonight.

I put my hand on the Keeper's door.

It swung open under my palm.

The room beyond was dark, and it smelled of cold ash and something sour.

"Keeper," I said.

Nobody answered.

I lit the lamp by the door with a taper from the wall.

The bed was made.

A cup stood on the sill, half full of something dark.

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